Do those with restraining orders have gun rights? SCOTUS weighs in.
Ruth Glenn knows from harrowing personal experience the danger of putting a gun in the hands of an abusive husband or partner, the issue at the center of a Supreme Court case.
On a beautiful evening in June 1992, Ms. Glenn was shot three times, twice in the head, and left for dead outside a car wash in Denver.
The shooter was her estranged husband Carlo, who had a court order to stay away from Ms. Glenn. But there was no federal law at the time that prohibited him from having a gun.
Two years later, Congress passed such a law, banning people experiencing domestic violence from owning guns. “He wouldn’t have had access to that gun if we had these current laws in place,” Ms. Glenn said in an interview with The Associated Press that took place outside the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Nov. 6 in a challenge to the 1994 law. The closely watched case is the justices’ first on guns since their landmark Bruen decision last year expanded gun rights and changed the way at which courts determine whether restrictions on firearms violate the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.”
Ms. Glenn, the president of Survivor Justice Action, is associated with gun control groups that support the Biden administration’s defense of the law.
Gun rights groups are backing Zackey Rahimi, the Texas man whose challenge to the law led to the case before the Supreme Court.
The law has blocked nearly 77,800 firearm sales over the past 25 years, said Shira Feldman, director of constitutional litigation at the gun violence prevention group Brady.
“At stake here is a law that works and is supported by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress,” Ms. Feldman said.
According to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms have been the most common weapon used in homicides of spouses, intimate partners, children or family members in recent years. Guns were used in more than half, 57%, of homicides in 2020, a year that saw an overall increase in domestic violence during the coronavirus pandemic.
An average of 70 women are shot and killed by intimate partners each month, according to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.
However, a gun is more than just a potential source of violence, Ms. Glenn said, recalling how her husband repeatedly threatened her and her then-teenage son David.
“I think sometimes we forget and think of the firearm as a deadly instrument, which it absolutely is. But it is also even more powerful as a means of control,” said Ms Glenn.
Mr Rahimi’s case reached the Supreme Court after prosecutors appealed a ruling that threw out his conviction for possessing weapons while under a restraining order.
Mr. Rahimi was involved in five shootings in and around Arlington, Texas, over two months, Judge Cory Wilson noted. When police identified Mr. Rahimi as a suspect in the shooting and showed up at his home with a search warrant, Mr. Rahimi admitted that he had guns in the house and that he was subject to a domestic violence restraining order that prohibited gun possession. Wilson wrote.
But even though Mr. Rahimi was hardly a “model citizen,” Mr. Wilson wrote, the law in question could not be justified by looking at history. That is the test that Judge Clarence Thomas set out in his opinion for the court in Bruen.
The appeals court initially upheld the conviction based on a consideration that included examining whether the restriction promotes public safety. But the panel changed course after Bruen. At least one district court has upheld the law since the Bruen decision.
Mr. Rahimi’s case and the issue of domestic violence could provide the government with the optimal situation for defending gun restrictions, said Hashim Mooppan, a former Justice Department official in the Trump administration.
“If the government could have picked any case to be the first post-Bruen case, I think they would have picked this case and this statute,” Mr. Mooppan said during a preview at Georgetown Law School of the major cases of the year.
But supporters of Mr. Rahimi said the appeals court was right to look at American history and find no restriction close enough to justify the gun ban.
They also object to the hearing at which restraining orders could be issued, saying they do not sufficiently protect the rights of people like Mr Rahimi.
“It is a kind of truth that our commitment to due process and the rule of law means very little if we do not guarantee that everyone gets a fair trial,” said Clark Neily, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, who wrote a brief letter. on Mr. Rahimi’s side.
Bruen’s decision has roiled the legal landscape, striking down rulings on more than a dozen laws, said Jacob Charles, a law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. These include age restrictions, a ban on homemade “ghost weapons” and a ban on gun ownership for people convicted of nonviolent crimes or the use of illegal drugs.
The court’s decision in the Rahimi case could have widespread ripple effects, including in the high-profile prosecution of Hunter Biden. The president’s son has been accused of buying a firearm while addicted to drugs, but his lawyers have indicated they will challenge the charge as invalid following the Bruen decision.
“It has the potential to be quite impactful,” Mr Charles said. While it is possible that the Supreme Court could decide the Rahimi case alone, it appears that “the court realizes that it will continue to hear these cases as usual if they decide so narrowly.”
Ms. Glenn somehow survived the shooting without damage to her brain and was released from the hospital after three days. But she and her son lived in fear for several months before Cedric Glenn killed himself with the same gun.
She wrote in her book “Everything I Never Dreamed” that the shooting changed her life and motivated her to prevent other women from suffering similar abuse.
“We’re saying the only thing that can protect them is a protective order that says someone has to have their gun removed,” Ms. Glenn said on the sidewalk outside the courthouse. “We only increase the risk to them if we don’t remove the very thing that threatens them.”
This story was reported by The Associated Press